From: James Britt <james_b@...>
Date: 2005-07-19T12:39:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby/Rails as a starter language?

vanek@acd.net wrote:
> If you don't need to get involved in web programming right away, gawk
> is probably the easiest and gives you a big bang for the buck, to mix
> metaphors. Ruby is a breath of fresh air but you will have a hard time
> appreciating many of the more powerful aspects of the language as a
> newbie. 

Why?

> Heck, many programmers even have a hard time wrapping their
> brains around object-oriented programming. 

And many don't.  And of those that do, a contributing factor is having 
spent too much time with procedural programming, or with "we're OO, 
except when we're not" languages.

OO is a fairly straightforward concept.  It gets messy with different 
implementations; Ruby's is quite clean.  People are better off going 
straight to OO than trying to creep up on it via clumsy "newbie" 
alternatives.


 > First crawl, then walk, then
> run. (If you see the word 'pointer' in the language you are studying
> you will want to avoid that language for at least a year. Pointers are
> dangerous for newbies, and thankfully all popular scripting languages
> shield you from 'em.) 


Please.  This sounds way too condescending.

Many early languages were crippled by a need to mimic hardware concepts. 
  Modern languages are more sufficiently abstracted so that the language 
exists more to serve the person than the machine.

AWK is a great tool, but there is zero reason to choose it over Ruby as 
a first language.

Go with Ruby.  Or Smalltalk.

Or Lisp, for that matter.

James

-- 

http://www.ruby-doc.org - The Ruby Documentation Site
http://www.rubyxml.com  - News, Articles, and Listings for Ruby & XML
http://www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff
http://www.jamesbritt.com  - Playing with Better Toys